The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan

More than earlier historians, Khan is interested in the alternative
possibilities that existed during that tumultuous time. Until the
Partition plan stipulated that Pakistan would consist of parts of
Punjab and Bengal, other shapes had been suggested, ranging from the
non-territorial to those demarcating islands and corridors with a
Muslim majority in India. Nor were alternative forms of territory and
sovereignty suggested only for Pakistan. One idea was that independent
city-states should be created in Calcutta, Delhi, Karachi and Lahore,
each ruled by an elected governor. Many of the rulers of the princely
states imagined separate futures for themselves, and occasionally
carried out ethnic cleansing: the Muslim Meos were massacred in the
princely states of Alwar and Bharatpur in present-day Rajasthan, for
example. In the rural areas of the princely state of Hyderabad, a
peasant uprising lasted from 1946 to 1951, beginning as a rebellion
against the feudal Nizam of Hyderabad but continuing as an
insurrection against the Indian state, which seized the Nizam’s lands
in 1948. Kashmir’s Hindu king, who ruled over a largely Muslim
population, tried at first to keep his options open before caving in
to pressure from the Congress. Soon after, Indian soldiers were flown
into the Valley to face off against Muslim irregulars supported by the
Pakistani army, so beginning a cycle of occupation, insurgency and
proxy wars that still continues.